Recorded as Smallridge, Smalldridge, Smalridge, Smaridge, Smalrudge, and others, this is an English surname. It is locational from a village called Smallridge near the town of Axminster in the county of Devonshire. It is uncertain as to when the place name was first recorded although the surname itself is recorded in the county from at least Elizabethan times. Locational surnames are usually 'from' names.That is to say names given to people after they left their original homes to move somewhere esle. Perhaps because traditionally Devon was the richest county in England, people never had a need to move far, because it is in Devon that even today in the 21st century that the surname in its varied forms is most widely recorded. Perhaps the earliest example of the surname recording is that of Richard Smalridge who married the somewhat unusually named Ibotte Rowe at the village of Shobrooke, on November 9th 1546. This was during the reign of the (in)famous King Henry V111th (1510 - 1547), but nevertheless the creator of church registers.

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